Constraints on Public Higher Education Spending Here and California. (November 20, 2009)

In the November 18 Australian Andrew Trounson writes: "A $200 million cutback this month on promised government infrastructure funding and uncertainty over

Protesting Students at UCLA

funding beyond the four-year budget initiatives are raising concerns there won't be enough money to expand participation while sustaining standards."

Ross Milbourne, University of Technology, Sydney vice-chancellor and chairman of the Australian Technology Network universities told Mr Trounson: "It would be a mistake to try to artificially raise our participation over and above what we can reasonably achieve," and The University of Melbourne's vice chancellor, Glyn Davis says: "We should not underestimate the considerable constraints to securing additional commonwealth funding."

Once again those vice-chancellors from the Group of Eight universities are favouring deregulation of university fees which the "outsiders" believe would put them at a disadvantage in overall funding, but in any case Federal Labor holds fee deregulation to be unacceptable.

La Trobe University vice-chancellor, Paul Johnson, however, is all in favour of expansion and asks rhetorically: "Have universities done everything they need to or can do to address the issue of getting maximum learning quality out of the government resources they have? No. We are a long way off that sort of ideal provision," and added that it was premature to consider deregulating fees given the potential for higher fees to discourage the participation of financially disadvantaged students.

In the meantime The New York Times reports the University of California Board of Regents this Thursday approved a plan to raise undergraduate fees 32% to more than US$10,000 a year by next September, to partially overcome the US$813 million (20%) cut in the current year's budget which has led to a hiring freeze, furloughs and layoffs.

According to the Times: "The impact on the University of California campuses has been dramatic: faculty hiring is not keeping up with enrollment demand, and many course sections have been eliminated. Instructional budgets are being reduced by $139 million, with 1,900 employees laid off, 3,800 positions eliminated and hiring deferred for nearly 1,600 positions, most of them faculty." In addition several of the UC campuses are looking to increase the proportion of out-of-state students who are charged significantly higher fees that Californians.

Mark Yudof, overall president of the University of California's ten campuses, noted that the University of California now receives half the state support per student it did in 1990 and even with the higher student fees, the system will need a US$913 million increase in state financing next year to avoid further cuts. Without it there will most probably have to be a cut in first year student intake.

Simply put he said: "When it comes to the university’s core support, we have only two main sources — taxpayer dollars from the state and student fees. Even with deep administrative cuts, when one goes down, the other almost inevitably must go up."

At the meeting of the Regents on Thursday, the  Times reports: "...many students spoke out against the fee increase, telling of their families’ struggles to get them a college education, their difficulty affording even the current fees, and the likelihood that higher fees would make the system’s campuses inaccessible to low-income students."

In another side to the effect of the financial squeeze many students are finding courses they must take in order to fulfil degree requirements have insufficient places for them. For example Nawal Siddiqui, a bioengineering major who hopes to go to medical school told the Times: "Last semester, I couldn’t get into a lab section for Chem 3A, so now I’m taking Chem 3B lectures, with the labs for Chem 3A. It’s kind of hard."

Richard A. Mathies, dean of the College of Chemistry at UC, Berkeley just says: "Dismantling this institution, which is a huge economic driver for the state, is a stupendously stupid thing to do, but that’s the path the Legislature has embarked on. When you pull resources from an institution like this, faculty leave, the best grad students don’t come, and the discoveries go down."

And not surprisingly some universities in the United States have begun allocating funds to use to recruit U.C. faculty. Patrick M. Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, a nonpartisan group that promotes access to higher education says: "In California [the difficulty is not just the economy], it’s really part of a significant retrenchment of the whole public sector. If the perception is that it’s going to be chronic, and people give up on California, the pre-eminence of Berkeley and U.C.L.A. would be in danger."

To increase the revenue stream at the Berkeley campus, 25% of next year's first year undergraduates will be international and out-of-state students. In addition the Times reports: "Mark Yudof, the university system president, has created a commission that will make recommendations next spring on the future size and shape of the system. Just about everything seems to be on the table. There is even talk of creating an online “11th U.C. campus,” to bring in new revenue by offering courses — and degrees — to qualified students in other states and countries."